On this week’s episode of The Publisher Podcast by Media Voices, we speak to Brandon Grosvenor, Chief Revenue Officer at Torstar Corporation, home of The Toronto Star. Over the summer, The Toronto Star became one of the first large publishers in North America to announce they were rolling out micropayments. It’s a feature audiences frequently request – especially with the rise of paywalls – but for a myriad of reasons, few publishers have experimented with.
Brandon discusses why they decided to try micropayments out alongside their subscription offering, the thinking behind their pricing and day pass strategy, and the challenges of audience growth in Canada. He also explains why he doesn’t think micropayments will be a significant revenue stream, but still has an important part to play in a publisher’s acquisition strategy.
Here are some highlights, lightly edited for clarity:
What made micropayments appealing as an option
We’re in a very heavy period of investigation and really trying to experiment with options. One thing that’s compelling with microsubscriptions or pay-per-article is one, I think it lends itself to our acquisition strategy…it’s an entry point. It’s an organic acquisition channel versus pumping all your money into search and trying to acquire customers off the backs of search engines.
But the other thing is that there’s a lot of evidence that there’s a certain subset of readers that are interested in specific content, but will never become a core subscriber. We would obviously rather have a valuable, stable subscriber. But if there’s an opportunity to open up our advertising ecosystem a little bit more through pay-per-article, while getting paid for our content, that’s a compelling reason for us to experiment.
It’s specifically interesting for the Toronto Star. It’s the largest newspaper in Canada, but obviously a lot of people read content outside [Toronto] that we don’t monetise through traditional advertising channels or subscriptions. So in order to appease those that want to consume our content on an infrequent basis, it gives us an opportunity to monetise and be much more aggressive on the pricing side, because we know you’re not going to be a long term subscriber. The advertising that’s localised is of no value to you. So how do we make sure that we’re being smart and monetising that content?
The right time to experiment
We’ve probably been more conservative around our approach to digital subscription acquisition. We haven’t gone as deep with discounts or as aggressive an acquisition strategy, because we do have a stable side of our subscription business as well.
We probably have one of the strongest advertising ecosystems where traffic is important, pageviews are important, but our subscription revenue post-Covid exceeds that of our advertising. So now it’s really time for us to press the accelerator.
Where pay-per-article, or microsubscriptions, I think have an offer is exposing people to the quality of content. The ability to show them that, if they’re paying a premium to read one article, hey, would you rather for the price you’re paying, have unlimited access for a small addition?
We’re very much in our infancy with micropayments. And I’m not suggesting this is a revenue stream that gets stacked up as one of our top-performing contributors. However I still think it’s a piece that fits into our acquisition strategy and into the marketing funnel quite nicely, especially as we try and limit our reliance on search and social.
The changing face of news in Canada
Where do people go for news now? We’ve had certain rules in Canada where, for instance Meta, who was one of the largest amplifiers of community news through you sharing in your community a news article, we’ve had legislation where the belief is that’s shared amongst most of those that are creating the content that, if you’re amplifying that content for commercial gain, you should pay for it. Meta made the decision to leave and not amplify that, so we have to find other ways to monetise.
We’re finding there’s a lot of direct traffic through the homepage, the traffic’s actually stabilised. But again, we still have to pay to keep the lights on and be able to produce great local content, and this provides us a gateway to do that.
With the downward pressure on advertising as well as losing the scale game, losing the distribution game, people find it harder to find [local] content. Google’s still a big provider for traffic around local utility. But I think people’s nature is, once they’ve found a local site that gives them what they need, they bookmark that site or app.
That’s just really what we need: local weather, traffic, breaking local news, all of those things. It’s a costly venture because obviously you’re not monetising larger market penetration and scale, but it’s still critically important for the democracy of all our communities.
The last three years have probably been more chaotic than the last 20 years that I’ve been in this business!
This season is sponsored by BlueConic, the operating system that puts data into action for marketing and growth doers. The industry-first solution empowers doers with an unmatched range of capabilities to access relevant customer data, create resonant customer experiences, and drive maximum returns for their business.
More than 500 businesses worldwide rely on BlueConic to unlock their full customer data potential, including Forbes, Heineken, Mattel, Michelin, Telia Company, and VF Corp.
